News

No Fusion of Nuclear Views

—Merri Shaffer4/22/2013

AFA Caption

BodyText

While leading experts who participated in a study came to
agreement in support of a sustainable US nuclear posture, they held
differing views on the practicality, feasibility, and desirability of nuclear
weapons, said Clark Murdock, senior adviser for nuclear
issues at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, on Friday.
"There's a fundamental difference in the value of nuclear weapons as well
as the vision of a world without nuclear weapons," he said during his
April 19 talk on Capitol Hill that AFA, the National Defense Industrial
Association, and Reserve Officers Association sponsored. Murdock outlined some
of the key findings of the forthcoming CSIS study that focused on finding
bipartisan agreement on the future US nuclear posture. The participants reached
consensus that "any actions the US and Russia took in respect to their
nuclear arsenals had no impact" on North Korea or Iran, he stated. They also
found that it's not direct deterrence but rather extended deterrence that is a
much bigger issue for the United States, he added. Further, some experts
believed that if the United States moved to make more reductions in its nuclear
arsenal, this would encourage more nonnuclear states to want to cooperate to a greater degree
on nonproliferation issues, he said. However, the experts agreed there was no
"hard evidence" of that, said Murdock. "Jury is out on whether
it has any impact on people's cooperation," he said.